No Direction Home

"Blindness will be like this." So says ten-year-old Will Burton, trying to reimagine his life in the wake of his father's abrupt disappearance, as his family picks up stakes and moves to California. Another boy, Rogelio Augilar, risks his life to cross the border illegally from Mexico to reach his father, enduring gangs, police roundups, and the pitiless desert. And Marlene McClure, a hard-edged, feisty teenager, leaves her own Midwestern home in search of a father she has imagined but never known. The lives of each of these families converge on a single home in Los Angeles--where the very needs and desires that have torn them apart allow them a measure of hope together. Written with heart-stopping grace and a powerful understanding of the needs and desires that define family, masterfully evokes how far we will go in the name of a place to call home. Reading group guide included.

"Silver is masterful at orchestrating her complicated cast of characters and settings....Moving and resonant." Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Gripping and at times heartbreaking....Silver, with her attention to everyday detail and her determination to take seriously the myriad individual lives that create California, has crafted a beautiful, honest and poignant novel of this siren state." San Francisco Chronicle

"A deft juggler of plot lines....[Silver] conjures an aching world of half-truths, physical need and emotional frustration." Publishers Weekly

"[A] perceptive look at the rippling effects of adversity on family dynamics." Booklist

This debut novel by the author of Babe in Paradise finds young Will Burton struggling to make sense of a redefined family after his father's disappearance, young Rogelio Augilar risking his life to illegally cross into Mexico to search for his father, and teenage Marlene McClure leaving her Midwestern home in search of a father she never knew.

Inhabiting the uncomfortable space between loss and self-discovery, this debut novel tells of missing fathers and the women and children they leave behind. The lives of three families converge in Los Angeles where the very needs and desires that have torn them apart allow them a measure of hope together.

"Blindness will be like this," says ten-year-old Will Burton, trying to reimagine his life in the wake of his father's abrupt disappearance. Another boy risks his life crossing the border illegally from Mexico to get to his father. And Marlene McClure, a fiery teenager, leaves her own Midwestern home in search of a father she has imagined but never known. These families converge on a single home in Los Angeles — where the very needs and desires that have torn them apart allow them a measure of hope together.

A tensely emotional debut novel of abandonment, loss, and the unexpected shapes families take to survive. "Silver is masterful at orchestrating her complicated cast of characters and settings....Moving and resonant."--

Marisa Silver is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Babe in Paradise. She lives in Los Angeles, California.